This breaks my heart to say, but Metal Gear Solid 4 is unequivocally the worst game in Hideo Kojima's otherwise brilliant series. If "worst" among some of the best games of the past decade doesn't sound so bad, I'll elaborate and suggest that Metal Gear Solid 4 isn't an especially good or bad game, though in the context of its phenomenal predecessors, producer Kojima's latest is depressingly disappointing.

Lest frequent readers of my frequently critical opinions assume I just like to hate, let me make clear the following: Metal Gear Solid is probably my favorite franchise in all of video gaming. I expected Metal Gear Solid 4 to be a great game.

If you're not a complete gameplay nerd like I am then some of my reasoning may seem obtuse or unnecessarily critical, but I love the Metal Gear Solid games for their impeccable gameplay, not for the fancy cinematics or the engaging (if ridiculous) story that I feel are most responsible for the franchise's notoriety. At the core of the gameplay is a complex set of steadfast, consistent AI rules that govern the player's tactics and operate hand-in-hand with the brilliant level design. Metal Gear Solid 2 is the best of this design--I don't care that Rose is whiny or that the last quarter of the game is nonsense without Wikipedia at hand--but each of the first three MGS games offers a unique variation of the formula while maintaining a consistent base of clearly defined rules.

It may take Wikipedia and a hit of acid to understand MGS2's story, but the impeccable gameplay and level design is where the good stuff's at.

Metal Gear Solid 4 abandons this tradition of excellence, its gameplay marred by flagrant inconsistencies and incongruous designs lifted from Western game philosophy and awkwardly shoehorned into Metal Gear's classically tight, perfect play.

Take, for instance, the mixed alert system rules that vary as Snake moves between areas. Traditionally, getting spotted triggers an alert during which guards actively attack Snake. The alert is followed by an evasion status, in which guards search for Snake, and that phase gives way to caution status that leaves beefed up security to patrol the area where Snake was spotted. Sensible. But Metal Gear Solid 4 doesn't always play by these rules, occasionally and transparently switching to another set of rules when Snake enters an area where PMC and militia forces are fighting each other. In these war zones, an alert means roughly the same thing as usual, but the evasion phase is completely negligible and caution never even occurs.

Those very familiar with the AI rules in Sons of Liberty and Snake Eater know that tranquilized and knocked out guards eventually wake up, and that knocked out guards remember that they were knocked out while sleeping enemies awaken and remember nothing but their patrol. Timid guards held up at gun point from behind assume the position indefinitely until they see that Snake is no longer minding them (or until an alert sounds). These rules apply in Metal Gear Solid 4, but only some of the time. When embattled with the rebel militia in the Middle East, PMC guards never wake up from knockouts or tranquilizers, not even if Snake tries to rouse them. And further dissolving any semblance of consistency, hold ups in these war zones only last as long as Snake holds his gun at the enemy's back. Turn away and the held-up targets immediately try to escape.

Mysteriously in the first Frog battle, knockouts and tranks are permanent, though later Frogs don't follow the same rules. Why the inconsistency?

There is no indication that the rules have changed in these war zone areas, and it's only by extensive trial and error that a player can grasp the rules and understand that which should be clearly defined.

There's a pretty easy solution that Kojima could have implemented to solve most of the inconsistencies of the war zone areas; he should have made war zones in a constant state of evasion. Doing so solves the alert system issue by preventing a caution from ever occurring and explains why held-up guards won't stay put. As well, the visual indication of an evasion status on screen hints to the player that the area he's wandered into is different than usual, though the rules from before still jive with consistent reasoning. Forcing all war zones into a constant evasion status doesn't explain the permanent knockouts, though--that's something only Kojima's design team can explain.

But even when I thought I'd figured out the unnecessary inconsistency of enemy AI routines in the presence of militia combatants, the game confounds the rules further in Act 2. In the very first area of Act 2, Snake can trigger a fight between the PMC guards and militia forces. "War zone rules," I assumed. But no, in this instance there's a strange hybrid rule set, in which the normal alert modes apply to Snake, knock outs and tranquilizers are still temporary, but hold ups no longer last indefinitely. As well, any enemy guards that were held up by Snake before the fight broke out decide to stand up even though there's no visible alert status that would normally rouse them--and these guards have no recollection of ever being held up by Snake, and so they don't trigger a caution phase as they would normally when breaking a hold up.

As if that hybrid rule set wasn't convoluted enough, a few areas later, at the Power Station, things get even more incomprehensible. The militia fights on one side of the large area, engaging PMC enemies to the west, but to the east is a host of PMC guards on patrol as if their comrades aren't engaged in battle on the other side of the hill. I successfully put all of the hilltop guards into indefinite hold-up positions, save for a pair of snipers overlooking the battlefield below from the western lip of the hill. When I tried to hold up the snipers, they resisted, trying to stand up as if following the aforementioned war zone rules--this was more or less understandable considering that the snipers were actively engaged in fighting the militia, though being in such close proximity to a group of guards that didn't play by these rules was disconcerting. The snipers never got to trigger an alert. They'd try to stand up, I'd put them back down, and eventually I settled on tranquilizing the pair before they were able to utter so much as a "!" in recognition of spotting Snake.

I couldn't have predicted what happened next. All of the guards I had previously put into indefinite hold-up status stood up and resumed their patrols as if nothing had happened, without triggering any sort of caution to acknowledge that Snake had engaged them earlier. Not only had all my stealthy work been undone by a strange inconsistency in the rules (there was no alert to rouse them out of their hold ups), but the guards inexplicably didn't follow the pattern of signaling a caution when recovering from a non-tranquilized position.

In this area, the Confinement Facility, all enemies operate on the same rule set except for the guy guarding prisoners. I held up everyone in the base but this guy's obstinance in the presence of militia fighters caused every other enemy in the base to stand up and resume their normal patrols.

I replayed the same area a number of times to confirm my findings, and an almost identical situation unfolded in a later area of Act 2 (Confinement Facility).

But the strange consistency issues with enemies aren't the only holes in Metal Gear Solid 4's design. The congruous Japanese design of the past games is spoiled by the sloppy implementation of some Western influences, most notably the nebulous ally system that lets Snake befriend militia forces to negate half of the threat on certain battlefields. The rules for getting the militia on your side aren't at all made clear. And the grand reward for achieving a rapport with the militia is that you essentially remove meaningful gameplay from certain levels. Sneaking through the Militia Safe House in Act 1 is one of the more compelling moments of the game, though if you befriend the militia early you can simply waltz through the underground area without implementing an iota of stealth. There are significant areas of Act 2 that are either grossly simplified or outright completed for the player if the militia gets early aid from Snake. Some great reward.

The nebulous alliance system is unwelcome in a series defined by evident rule sets.

The first half of Act 3 strikes me as a lazy concession to Western tastes that plays like a poor man's Hitman. With emphasis on trial and error, rather than execution based on prior gameplay learnings, the Act 3 sequence offers yet another undefined and unnecessary deviation from the normal rules of Metal Gear Solid gameplay.

Other Western influences are less egregious but similarly telling, such as the rotating camera angle, over-the-shoulder shooting and dual analog, FPS-style controls. While these are far from game-breaking introductions to Metal Gear, they do further dilute the qualities that make Metal Gear the unique gameplay experience that it is. The Western design influences strike me less as meaningful additions to gameplay and more as a calculated effort to maximize the Western appeal of the series, which traditionally sells better in Western markets than in Japan.

Kojima's assertion that video games aren't art certainly rings true in light of such marketing-influenced design.

I've also got qualms with the story and presentation, though I won't pretend that they ruin the game for me. The mission briefings are painful. The vast majority of non-action cut scenes are numbingly slow. Too many characters from the past are senselessly brought back and too conveniently fit into the plot. The staggering worldwide scope of Metal Gear's overarching plot is condensed to a handful of characters that never were especially important in their original appearances, and the execution comes across as patronizing. It's as contrived as the character-stuffed story in Smash Bros. Brawl, except that people actually want to care about Metal Gear.

The boss characters are the most interesting additions to Metal Gear lore, but the actual fights are disappointing in the wake of Snake Eater's excellent battles.

The game's boss fights aren't on par with those in past Metal Gear Solid games. Level design in general is weak, save for a few notable areas like Act 1's Millennium Park. Act 4 is a brilliant surprise let down by uninspiring gameplay. And the Mk. II spoils the urgency of MGS stealth gameplay with no incentive to not abuse it.

It's difficult to wrap up my feelings about Metal Gear Solid 4, as I presume it was difficult for Hideo Kojima to wrap up Metal Gear's plot, so forgive my mind for wandering. I just hope that the core of my argument is more solid than the core of Metal Gear Solid 4 gameplay.